Hacker News Reader

Comment by 2mur | Hacker News Reader

I hope they are doing the Thrawn trilogy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrawn_trilogy

I have a feeling they will completely ignore the expanded universe.

I've been really disappointed that the expanded universe hasn't been explored more. There is so much more to Star Wars than just the stories surrounding Luke and Anakin as the protagonist.

I have fond memories of reading some of the expanded universe books as a kid and I'm disappointed that none of them have gotten attention as potential future movies.

> I have fond memories of reading some of the expanded universe books as a kid

Yeah, I did too. Piece of advice: don't go back and reread them. They're awful. At least the ones by Kevin J. Anderson.

I remember thinking the Thrawn trilogy was great. A few months ago I found the trilogy at a library sale and picked then up for a couple bucks for nostalgia's sake. They are awful too. And you are right, the ones by Anderson were worse.

Read a novelization of the Original Trilogy. It would suck too.

To me, the Thrawn Trilogy is 'our only hope' of lucasarts getting this even close.

Actually, I'm not sure the novelizations of those would suck. It's been ~30 years since I've read a Star Wars book, granted, but AFAIK the original novel, which was credited to George Lucas himself (as if), was ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster -- who I believe was actually consulting with Lucas while the movie was in production, and had some influence on what we actually saw on screen. Foster wrote a sequel to Star Wars called Splinter of the Mind's Eye which was originally intended to be the story used for the second movie.

Having said all that, I would put fairly high odds on Disney ignoring the "Expanded Universe" stuff and actually going with whatever Lucas claims was his original idea for episodes 7-9, unless the ideas suck so much that they think they'll be box office flops.

Having read almost all expanded universe books up to the late ninties, yes I completely agree that the books by Timothy Zahn a by orders of magnitude the best source for episodes 7 - 9. Just afraid that they will be completely ignored. If they are using books I asume it will some crap written by Kevin J. Anderson or something based on George Lucas own ideas.

Funny thing is that Lucas Films always had the more or less final say in which stories and books were written only to ignore a lot of the back-story for episodes 1 - 3.

While I'm kind of happy to see some more Star Wars movies coming, I'm actualy scared what they will look like. Propably some of the later New Jedi Order stories (since the original actors are a littel old by now) which will suite much better to the target populace. Tjis doesn't necessarily have to be something bad, but I'm not yet convinced...

That series would seem to have the highest probability of happening, but I hope they move away from numerical episode numbering and toward just movie Titles like "Star Wars Heir to the Empire" because titles like "Star Wars Episode 6.625 Wraith Squadron" are just silly.

I look forward to Plinkett's evisceration of the Thrawn trilogy's mothball fleet of 200 dreadnoughts all slaved to one ship that can be effectively operated by a skeleton crew.

Sadly the best Star Wars books I know are Brian Daley's Han Solo Trilogy and the X-Wing books by Michael Stackpole. Both are light on Jedis and not likely to get made into films.

I know that the Hero with a 1000 Faces heavily influenced the first Trilogy, but I think some of the light on Jedi story lines have a lot to offer as well since they doesn't put so much focus on hero heavy mythology and can give more attention to the flaws of men (and women) (human, droid or otherwise) as the basis of a story. These stories have the potential to explore themes like those in Bladerunner, Alien(s), etc.

My thoughts exactly when hearing of the news, but I doubt it'd actually happen :( They'd probably have to get rights from Zahns publisher or Dark Horse or whomever owns it, I'd think. I don't think this purchase counts as an umbrella IP grab for all offshoots too?

Well after buying the whole Lucasfilm for $4B you'd think buying the IP rights for the Thrawn triolgy shouldn't be that big an issue ;-)

If they can afford Lucasfilm, they can surely afford to license Zahn's books. (Assuming Lucasfilm didn't already have the right to film them, which they might, if they thought to insert the right language into the book contracts.)

Whether they want to is another question.

That'd be simply too much of a liability. Yes, the authors of those books signed away rights to their stories to the publishers, and the publishers to Lucasfilm Ltd., but how well written were those contracts? Did they miss anything? Are you absolutely sure that every clause is enforceable? As there is literally a billion dollars on the line, I expect there would be no shortage of greedy lawyers calling up struggling ghost writers and struggling trying to make a case even if there isn't one.

I don't know what the new trilogy will be about (except it will probably have C3PO and R2D2, and Chewbacca makes a cameo). The one thing I am absolutely certain of is that none of it will be drawn from the expanded universe.

I think Darth Bane Trilogy is pretty good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com